orienteering race (Jukola 3rd leg) 2:51:57 [3] ***** 10.42 mi (16:30 / mi) +386m 14:48 / mi
spiked:15/19c slept:3.0 shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon
Leg 3, 12.7km.
4am, enough light that I would not need a headlamp.
Near perfect weather, about 10C and no rain to be seen.
Walking around in the warm up area. Plenty of dust, tried to stay near the grassy edge. Cool system of monitoring your runners progress with a station at which you insert your emit and it displays your team's leg number, time for that leg so far, distance in leg of last control punched, time since that punch, distance of next control.
Got it just right as I checked, JJ had punched the last control and I looked up to see him crossing the field.
His advice at handoff "Have fun, man" left me a bit skeptical.
I took my time on the first leg, a bit over 2 K to a very detailed area. A bit of a roundabout route to stay on trail. Missed, but fortunately a trail just beyond minimized lost time. Navigated fairly well from then on, still had some misses but again with great backstops to relocate.
Definitely some tricky control, but I got them OK, lost most time when I crossed a mapped trail (lots of elephant trails of course) without noticing, hit what I thought was it, and then hit a manned water stop, which was not on the map. At least got a drink there, but took a few minutes of convincing my self it was not on the map and had missed a trail to go back to get number 13.
Kept it going well until the end, punched the correct final control (there were 2 and some teams DNF'd when a runner hit the wrong one).
Great to hear some "Go Jeff" I assume from Steve as I ran in.